Dixon Jones2011

Gathering Link Intelligence

To Improve your SEO

About Dixon Jones

• Getting too old for this business

• Set up a UK SEO Consultancy in 1999

• Free trial to anyone that can tell me what car I drive:

About Majestic SEO

Largest back-link crawler on the planet

3 Trillion URLsRecrawling half a

billion each day for Anchor text Page strength Redirections Crawl dates and more

This Presentation

• The Tactics

• The Tools

• The Traps

1. USING THE PRESS2. REACHING OUT TO BLOGGERS3. USING GOOGLE AGAINST ITSELF4. LINK RECLAMATION5. LEVELLING THE COMPETITION6. LOW HANGING FRUITS7. LINK WHEELS8. USING SOCIAL9. USING WORDPRESS TRICKS10. BECOMING THE AUTHORITY

10 Tactics

Using the Press:Beautiful People

Competitive arena

Not generally Newsworthy

New siteNeeded to

create a “bang”Let’s create a storm by saying we are kicking out “fat” members

The links they got

BBCCNNFoxCTV

The correlation between links and Traffic

Lessons:Good bait = good linksGood links = good traffic

But:Press Release links seem to need perseverance. Is there something stickier?

STOP! ARRET!

Good links = good trafficSustained success needs partnerships

Blogger Links the Easy Way

Spend money and hire blogger through networks to write articles for you

Is this just a paid link?

Bloggers the Right Way

Get to know the right bloggers on a personal level

Show them that you have something their readers cannot do without

Bloggers LOVE exclusive just like newspapers (Especially after the Farmer update I assume)

Finding the Right Bloggers

Technorati linked with Twitter engagement (Search for mentions of the @name)

See if they are in your custom search engine (We will come onto that...)

See if inner pages have (real) links/reputation

Tactic: Using Google to gather intelligence

Search for “[keyword] add url”Use Directory.google.com (Dmoz) to find

authority verticlesBuild a Google search engine JUST

containing potentially good sites in your niche and search these every day for conversations you can participate in

Combine these strategies

Using Google

Using Google

Using Google

Add the relevant sites to your own custom engineRepeat for relevant sites linking to your competition (See later)Repeat again for sites that rank for your keyword

THEN search for “add url” or “comment” in this database

Link reclamation

Coolest trick in the book

Step 1: Find all URLs with links

(Links to your site)

Step 2: Export as CSV

Step 3: Check Header Response

The result: Free link juice

86 potential URLS (More links)

Levelling the competition

You MUST know your competitors’ best links and strategies

You need to neutralize them or emulate (copy) them or better still... Replace them. (But see more in “traps”)

Visualizing The Competition

Visualizing Anchor Text

Competitor Link Quality

Low Hanging Fruits

Buying network linksLow quality directoriesVery unrelated sitesSpam syndication

Using Social: Technobait

The Clever Techno bit

The Results

The Results

The Lessons:You can build technology that engages with humans AND is socialPlaying to people’s vanity is a great tip.

But… Social links are not always good for Search. But does that really matter so much any more?

Using Wordpress

Spread the Link LoveWatch it come back right at you

Use Pingback to pick up mentions Competitions – top 10 [Keyword] bloggers Use the redirection plugin for link reclamation Pingomatic and social media plugins (ping.fm)

Link Wheels

REMEMBER:

YOU!

Becoming the authority that others refer to

The Sticky, Useful Technobait

Ranking is not enough

UCC has enough referring domains to rank #1

But the site is losing traffic due to losing big partner sitewide links to other technologies

The lessons• Ranking is not enough• Create a barrier to

entry• Keep innovating• Do not assume links

are forever• Look after your

partners

Traps

Simply adding a link to existing content

Site wide footer linksBeing able to be

spotted in a manual review

VS.

Simply adding a link to existing content

Site wide footer links

Being able to be spotted in a manual review

Tools Majestic SEO

Please give me a card to receive a month’s free trial of Majestic SEO

Takeaways

• Links = Traffic• Press can be influential• Technology can be even

more powerful• Create:

• Authority• Interaction• Sustainability• Barrier to entry

• Thank you. Merci.

Majestic SEO

Please give me a card to receive a month’s free trial of Majestic SEO